Silverlight build 2.0.40115.0 fixes a few minor bugs

Silverlight has been updated to build 2. 3!)

Silverlight is still facing a very uphill battle against a Flash-saturated market, despite various milestones. Last month, the official Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) chose Silverlight for Obama's inauguration. Last week Microsoft announced a $5,000 Silverlight game developer contest, and two days later, Moonlight 1.0 was released. Microsoft's new Silverlight-only website for IT Pros, Microsoft Thrive, also recently launched.

Today, Microsoft quietly updated Silverlight to build 2.0.40115.0. The previous Silverlight build was 2.0.31005.00, released in October 2008. You can grab the latest build from Microsoft.com, or just wait until it trickles out through Microsoft Update. This is a bug fix release; here's what's new:

Fixes problems that were caused by Silverlight and McAfee scanning tools interactions

UI automation stability fixes, including:

graceful failures when attempting to use features that require .Net Framework 3.0 or 3.5 on machines that do not have either framework installed

improved Tablet support

Fixes an issue that arises when Mac users customize their environment by removing Arial and Verdana fonts

Silverlight 3 is expected to be announced at MIX09 next month, without 64-bit support but with other big plans. Microsoft has said that Silverlight 3 is going to be a pretty major update: graphics improvements like 3D support and GPU hardware acceleration, H.264 support for video, the ability to have some 3D effects, as well as major application development improvements (including richer data-binding support and additional controls).